Blackouts are getting worse. Here’s what Duquesne Light is doing — and what it won’t do.

At the beginning of September, Pittsburgh was hit by what’s categorized as a “1-in-100-year storm.” We also experienced a derecho in April of last year that took the lives of three people and was declared a disaster emergency. Climate change has upended the odds, and we can’t bet on the interval between what should be once-in-a-lifetime weather events. 

This year, 60,000 lost power. For most, it only lasted for a few hours. For some, the blackout lingered for a few days. The one last April was worse, and so were the consequences. Hundreds of thousands of people lost power for as long as a week.

“It was certainly a milestone for our company, and not a good one,” said Matt Neistein, Duquesne Light Company’s director of communications and brand.

While the storm was the cause, DLC took big heat for how they handled the symptoms. The damage prompted  disaster emergency declarations from both the City of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County, which formed a  Special Committee on Emergency Preparedness and After-Action Review to examine storm readiness and response. They called DLC on the carpet in a meeting last September, and DLC answered with a commitment to $2.7 billion dollars worth of improvement. 

Significant work has been done in the past year, but the investment is scheduled to be dispersed over half a decade, and even then it won’t entirely solve a problem that climate change has worsened. On Sunday morning, as remnants of Tropical Rainstorm Isaias moved through the area, Duquesne Light was reporting power outages affecting around 4,000 Allegheny County customers.

Ideally, we would like the power to not go out at all. When it does, we would like it to be restored immediately. If events unfold otherwise, we fault the utility companies who we pay to provide power to us. 

Last month Pittsburgh’s Public Source asked readers what they’re experiencing and doing as the weather affects the power. You’ll see some of the responses here. We asked a few people to share their experiences in detail, and asked DLC’s Neistein for an update.

Jill DellaSalla owns a pet care business, housesitting dogs in their homes, welcoming them in her own. “I was born in this house and we never used to lose electricity,” she said. “Now I get anxious every time it storms.” 

During the April 2025 storm, she hosted a dog she’d watched multiple times and together they  weathered not only the storm, but the aftermath of a week without electricity. 

The houses across the street never lost power at all. 

DellaSalla made it through the week with wireless and car chargers, a battery-operated lantern, rechargeable fans, two large coolers and multiple daily journeys in search of ice, which often demanded visits to half a dozen stores. The companionship of the pup was a morale booster.  “Watching a dog made it easier because I wasn’t concentrating on me,” she said. While she didn’t lose income, she did lose a fridge and freezer full of food. She started to add the cost but gave up when the dollar amount of condiments alone became clear. 

On her fifth day without electricity she ordered a generator. (With current prices of groceries, gas and utilities that purchase would now be out of reach.) The needed oil and a gas can are ready for service, and while the device is still in the box she took the instructions out this spring. Hopefully it won’t be needed anytime soon, but having it helps. 

She praises DLC for bringing in crews from out of town, including those who went the extra few steps to get the greenlight to complete her block. Precious battery life was used to report her continuing outage daily, and she notes the lack of return communication as a frustration.

DLC has made some progress, Neistein said.

The process of reaching contractors to address downed lines and damaged equipment has been automated; previously, as unbelievable as it may seem in the 21st century, this was accomplished by individual phone calls. Outage maps have been enhanced, with more detailed information and quicker updates. Call centers handle greater volume, and text communications with customers are now two-way, allowing feedback to updates to confirm — or not — their accuracy.

While the tools in play can give a general sense of where restoration has occurred and where it’s still needed, they’re not always reliable when it comes to specifics. “We might know a circuit with a thousand customers is down, send a crew, fix the transformers, and tech says it’s back on,” Neistein explains, “But it doesn’t tell us that within it there’s one tree on one street that took out a section of wire.” In situations like this, communications from customers go a long way toward solving problems by identifying them.

All of this work is on reactive measures. What would be nicer would be to prevent those damages in the first place, and Neistein said some strides have been made in that direction as well, although not what some might want. 

The solution that would seem to be the obvious one is to move everything underground. Downtown’s grid is already there; if it’s good enough for the Golden Triangle, why not for the rest of Pittsburgh? But the system at the city’s center, its installation begun a century ago, is practically a historic landmark.

Neistein cited the prohibitive cost of underground lines, which he put at approximately a million a mile or more, would add up into billions and would be passed along to the customer. The second problem is the time necessary to dig up thousands of miles: decades. Less momentous but still worthy of consideration is the difficulty of repairs, which are needed less often than on overground systems but are more complex and time-consuming. 

Instead, DLC has tried what Neistein describes as an “overall hardening of the grid,” replacing older equipment with modern equipment. There’s a focus on vegetation management. The fewer branches and trees likely to compromise lines the better. Handling as many as feasible prior to damage best of all. Neistein estimates DLC will be pruning or removing 40,000 trees this year alone. 

Most of these are on public rights-of-way; if on private property the utility company will contact the homeowner to tackle a threat. This is another area in which DLC is happy to get a heads up. If a perilous sycamore looms in your yard or sketchy poplar towers in a vacant lot, give them a ring, they’ll assess the hazard the offending limb or trunk presents, and if needed will take action. 

Even if not reaching out about wayward boughs, however, Neistein stresses the importance of keeping lines of communication open, including updating contact information beyond the address to which your bill is sent. For at least a third of customers, DLC has no phone number, and this is critical for updates on outages which are unfortunately a foregone conclusion. 

“We can do all the investment we want,” he said, “But when an oak tree comes down on wires there’s nothing we can do about it.”

Before moving three years ago for an arts administrator position with the University of Pittsburgh, Jeremy Seghers joined community groups on social media to get a sense of the place he would soon call home. “I saw a lot of people complaining about losing power,” he said. “It was a little bit of a concern.” 

Seghers relocated from Florida, which gave him extensive experience in storm preparation. Once in Pittsburgh, his neighbors in Beechview told him that power outages were a rarity in the area. For some time that stayed true, as he emerged unscathed from last year’s catastrophic weather. 

In September, the wheel turned when a power line was downed by a tree and he had his very first Pittsburgh blackout. It lasted 16 hours.  

The temperature allowed open windows, an improvement from sunshine state outages heavy with muggy heat. His dog and cat seemed unaffected, and due to a habit of not stocking up too much on groceries, the financial loss was minimal. “In all honesty, I don’t think it was that bad,” he said. “I kind of know what to do.”

He sees a lot of room for improvement in communications, especially since outages can mean limited or sluggish internet access. While he could receive texts, sending was extremely slow and so was refreshing DLC’s website. Some links didn’t load. “I don’t know if there’s some other way to do it, but it seems like for them to communicate with us is much better than us trying to communicate with them.”

Even with a routine from his prior residence, he’s revising parts of the pattern and how he assesses the potential for issues. “The foliage is different,” he said. “Palm trees bend; here they don’t bend, they just fall over.” He’s identified one in a condemned lot next door that he’s looking to have removed before it damages his house. And he’s lining up pet-friendly hotels to which he can flee if necessary.

Lissa Brennan is from an island that was without power and water for months following Hurricane Irma and can be reached at lissabrennan.lb@gmail.com.  

This story was fact-checked by Rich Lord.